Investigating the Effects of a Set of Intercorrelated Variables on Eye Fixation Durations in Reading

The present experiment investigated the influence of 5 intercorrelated variables on word recognition using a multiple regression analysis. The 5 variables were word frequency, subjective familiarity, word length, concreteness, and age of acquisition (AoA). Target words were embedded in sentences and eye tracking methodology was used to investigate the predictive power of these variables. All 5 variables were found to influence reading time. However, the time course of these variables differed. Both word frequency and familiarity showed an early but lasting influence on eye fixation durations. Word length only significantly predicted fixation durations after refixations on the target words were taken into account. This is the 1st experiment to demonstrate concreteness and AoA effects on eye fixations.